Firearms Rights, the Primary Law, and a Draft Pro-Guns Statute

Abstract

In District of Columbia v. Heller, there was judicial confirmation that the pre-existing right guaranteed by the Second Amendment is individual, not collective. Unfortunately, Associate Justice Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion, took back as much as he gave. He relativized the Second Amendment. The taking back and the relativization were errors. The Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” may not be diminished by a judicial opinion. The direct parallel to the Second Amendment is the First Amendment. The constitutional right “of the press,” for instance, may not be diminished by a judicial opinion. After Heller, as before it, firearms rights of ordinary men and women (who are serfs-called-citizens) remain subject to many requirements. In contrast, elected officers (who are citizens-in-fact) are protected by policemen and their concealable firearms. After Heller, as before it, restrictions on private firearms are promoted by elected officers to the detriment of ordinary men and women. Calls for restrictions on private firearms, like calls for public transportation in lieu of private cars, express the disdain of elected officers for personal efforts by ordinary men and women. Consternation is the reaction of elected officers to self empowerment by ordinary men and women, and to the consequent freeing by ordinary men and women of themselves from dependence on elected officers. Empowered and freed ordinary men and women do not sign up for enslaving programs peddled by elected officers. This essay discusses the contemporary circumstances of the Second Amendment; refers to constitutional carry and suggests a constitutional-carry law; reviews a constitutional-carry law proposed in New Hampshire (the Constitutional Carry Act of 2011); analyzes the current firearms laws in New Hampshire and Arizona; and offers a firearms statute (the Concealable-Firearms Rights Act of 2020) which is suitable as a step forward for the jurisdictions with vehement anti-firearms laws: California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — and Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.